15 September 2009

Some progress

I hit 5 million for GPUgrid yesterday. Below is my certificate.

Carrying on from the last post...

I went back to the computer shop and they supplied a couple of PS/2 to USB convertors. This got the machine up and running. I reinstalled Windows. Couldn't get it to recognise the LAN ports until I installed the drivers from the CD (the standard P6T doesn't cause this much grief). I then could see the network, apply service pack 3. I then downloaded another 51 updates from Microsoft and at least its up to date. Next was to setup windows the way I usually have it. Then installed BOINC. So far so good. Told BOINC to fetch some work so it gets a pile of cuda work from Seti at home and they all start erroring out. Suspend Seti work and let it get a GPUgrid task. It causes a blue screen of death. I reinstall the nvidia drivers and try again. This time it locks up the machine. At this point its gone midnight and I have to work the following day so I power it off and head to bed.

Today after work I come home and decided to swap out the GTX295 with a GTX275 that I know was working. Reinstall nvida drivers one more time. Start up BOINC again and it seems to be working so far. Its even screaming through Seti cuda work at about 2 minutes a pop. Pity the upload server isn't working so I can't upload results but they can wait a while.

My conclusion is the GTX295 is a dud and I will need to arrange for it to go back to where it came from (in Brisbane). I haven't taken the other machine out of its box yet. Hopefully its GTX295 will work. Oh and the name for this one is Spock.

Another strange thing about this one is the shop wired up the fans so they are controlled via the knob on the front of the case. That makes it quite messy inside as they daisy-chained power cables so they could reach. The fans can be plugged into the motherboard. If they are plugged into the motherboard then the computer can control their speed depending on how hot it gets. Thats they way I prefer them wired up. Looks like i'll have to rearrange the cabling next.